By the time I got to the end, it had turned into a list of the different ways we communicate with each other. (Anyone got ideas about how we communicate via smell and taste?)

This list led to several questions:

1) If a person was alone, would there be any need to communicate? With one’s self, perhaps?

2) If a person never learned language, what sort of thoughts would form? Would they be structured in any way, or just a series of sense impressions?

3) Why is so much of communication visual? (I think I can surmise the answer to this question.)

Along with questions, the list led to some observations.

1) There are two parts (at least) to communication: the content that’s being communicated and the vehicle for communicating that content. (I guess it would also help if there was someone on the receiving end of the communication.)

2) We have highly visual languages built of characters/lines/drawings, etc. These visual languages tend to be complex.

3) When it comes to auditory and kinesthetic languages, they tend to be reduced, compacted into limited symbols that can be recombined in infinite ways.

These are the first things I thought about my list, but they are by no means definitive. I’ve got a lot more thinking to do about the subject. In the meantime, I’ve added several links to my sidebar that refer to some of the languages that most of us don’t typically use. Some of the links are for translators, so you can have fun seeing how our standard written language is transformed into Morse code or braille or semaphore.

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “The Variety of Human Language”

Question #2 jumped out at me because I remember learning in a psych class in college that without language, we would not be able to think in a structured way. I think Helen Keller wrote about this once and that the years before she finally learned language (via signs) are a blur of unformed memories. Without language she couldn’t retain or put in order the information. Or something like that. Very interesting.

It’s been interesting, too, with Little D who has a speech delay (oral motor issues). We started sign language with him when he was quite young (4 months) and luckily we did as his language comprehension is fantastic, even though he cannot speak much yet. He regularly uses over 200 signs. I wonder sometimes if there has actually been an advantage to his delay in that his language has been so grounded in his body. I wonder if it has led to more integration between his left and right brain as it has merged language with gesture.

What a great tidbit of info concerning Helen Keller, Joanne. I’ll have to see if I can read up on her.

Cool about Little D’s fluency with signing. Our Eldest Son was born a number of years before teaching sign to infants became popular. I wish we had known about it earlier, though, because Eldest Son was late to talking and got easily frustrated (as did we!) over his inability to communicate with us.

As Above, Not So Below

Teacup Art Show

Creative Commons

If you are interested in using any of my work posted on The Woo Woo Teacup Journal for commercial purposes (i.e. you plan to use it to make money), contact me at woowooteacup (at) gmail (dot) com for permission.